


I Don't Need You to Agree (I Don't Need You to Agree with Me)

by linearoundmythoughts



Category: Gotham (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canon Disabled Character, Dreams and Nightmares, Drinking to Cope, I still don't understand tagging, I'm actually terrible at tagging things, M/M, There's a knife but no violence, post 3x11, that feel when you forget to take your eye makeup off, that feel when your brain is mean and changes the meaning of a riddle
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-27
Updated: 2016-12-27
Packaged: 2018-09-12 15:08:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,613
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9078100
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/linearoundmythoughts/pseuds/linearoundmythoughts
Summary: Oswald doesn't dream, anymore; he relives the same nightmares on an endless loop. Post 3x11.





	

Oswald finds himself trapped, caught wordless and breathless in front of the glass windows behind the desk. The light splashes in, a bath of brightness so white it washes out all the details, all of the parts of the scene he doesn’t already have etched into his mind. Cruel and blinding in memory, all hope the glow had once represented now forever absent.

He can’t close his mouth, nor speak the words he needs to. Trapped in a puzzle he cannot solve, cannot outmaneuver, cannot act against, he gapes and strains in an endless loop of his greatest regret.

“What is it, Oswald?” the man in front of him asks, faceless in the glare, impossible to read, to see, to decipher.

Oswald feels his eyes being to water up from the pain of the light, from the fear. He has a dull recollection that he’s not sober and had all but passed out from drinking earlier.

“What is it?” the figure repeats himself. He’ll keep repeating it if Oswald doesn’t try to answer.

Every time he says it, he sounds angrier and every time Oswald feels his heart weaken in response.

“I—” Oswald tries, choking the sound out.

This isn’t real—it’s a dream, he convinces himself. No, not a dream—a nightmare. It’s simply the newest one added to his subconscious’ repertoire of his life’s tragedies, always coming back in these vulnerable moments he can’t control, to haunt him for his crimes.

“I’m never going to say ‘yes,’ Oswald,” the man tells him, calmly this time, not unkindly, which makes it worse to hear. “You know that. So, why do you keep trying?”

“Because I have to,” Oswald announces, resolute and with ease. If the words aren’t the ones he _wants_ to say, they come out with no problems.

“But you disgust me,” he replies. “You _repel_ me. I’m never going to return your feelings; I never did. Why would you think anyone would love you the way you are? What made you think I was ever being sincere?”

“Hope,” Oswald answers him, tears pricking in his eyes: actual ones, this time.

“Foolish sentimentalist,” the man scoffs, his face nothing but shadow now in the light, as it grows even brighter, more painful to look at.

Oswald shifts his feet, gripping his cane tighter.

“You can taunt me all you’d like. I know this isn’t real, but it’s the only way I can try to fix it.”

The man shifts forward, the light catching on his glasses. The illusion of them is all Oswald can still see in the wash-out.

“On the contrary, Oswald,” his voice is deadpan and empty, “just because this isn’t _reality_ doesn’t make this _real_.”

Oswald chokes in his own cowardice, in the struggle of his own self-punishment, courage to keep fighting this conversation waning.

“Why do you keep trying?” the man gestures with a hand, palm open, as he snickers just enough to be heard. “Why repeat this, why put yourself through it?”

Oswald grins, despite himself. “Because I’m relentless, Ed. I’m always been selfish enough to never give up my ambitions. I don’t quit when I want something.”

“But you can’t have me. You only want me because you’re lonely and selfish—”

“No!” Oswald shouts, shaking his head. “That’s how I lost you, Ed. My loneliness drove me to make a mistake I wasn’t prepared to face, but my selfishness I don’t regret. Without that, how would I have known how much I needed you?”

“Love can’t be selfish—”

“Oh, yes it can,” Oswald sneers. “It’s inherently selfish. There is nothing selfless about it. For anyone. You make my life better, Ed. You make the darkness light. Presented with something like that…I had come to a crossroads, and I had to choose which path I would take. If I was—if I had _understood_ what I understand now that I’ve lost you, I would’ve—”

Nothing he’s saying makes any sense; he can’t explain how he feels here or anywhere else. Talking his way out of something was his only _skill_ , and that was in shambles before him now, as well.

Oswald clenches his eyes shut, bawling his fist up against his mouth. He can’t face this; why did he think he could fight this? He can’t defeat it, can’t overcome it, can’t handle it—

He hears Ed clear his throat and opens his eyes to see what he wants. They’re in the GCPD headquarters, back on the day they met. Ed is wearing a lab coat and grinning with an innocence long erased.

“What do you want?” Oswald asks, trying to remember if that’s what he said when they first spoke. Maybe if he runs through the script, the nightmare will end—

“The same thing I’ve always wanted from you, Oswald,” he responds cheerfully, stepping forward until they’re almost touching. Ed’s smile twists into something darker, something that makes him look _dangerous,_ and he leans in, quickly closing the distance their respective heights naturally create. Oswald wants to step back, away, but he can’t move.

He remembers the knife in his hand…yes, the _knife_ …there should be a knife…he looks down to check that it’s there, and when he raises it to Ed’s throat, time has already jumped and the scene changed again. Dressed in a sweater with his shirt collar poking out, green light breaking up the shadows, Ed doesn’t shake under Oswald’s blade this time. He looks _down_ on Oswald, his eyes almost black.

“What costs nothing, but is worth everything, weighs nothing, but can last a lifetime, that one person can’t own, but two can share?” he asks Oswald, swallowing thickly, never breaking his stare.

“I don’t know!” Oswald screeches, dropping his head, his control slipping. “I don’t care!” he bellows, lunges his head forward, eyes open wide. Ed, who is now dressed in one of his nicest suits, backs up against the doorframe, a gun pointed in his face.

Ed looks terrified. Oswald remembers perfectly the fragments like this, the times he thought he understood Ed, thought he understood what was going on behind that facade of confusion he wasn’t sure Ed was even able to escape.

Shaking, Ed lifts both of his hands, bounces his index fingers off of each other, and just when Oswald starts to scream at him to stop, Ed grimaces, flashes his teeth at Oswald, and makes a show of his fingers moving in two opposite directions, two lines that meet once and will never intersect again.

“Nothing,” he breathes. “‘Nothing’ is the answer!” his grin so wide it distorts his face and he starts to cackle.

“Everything costs something,” Ed becomes the version of himself wearing the lab coat, still grinning madly, waving his fingers around to punctuate his points.

“Nothing is worth _everything_ ,” Ed explains, pushing his own neck against the blade, the skin going white where one fraction of pressure more and it will start to cut, his eyes still locked with Oswald’s, “and there’s nothing you and I will ever share.”

“Nothing,” he hisses, seated across from Oswald at Arkham, in his prison uniform. “ _Nothing_ lasts a lifetime,” Ed seethes as he grips the table, like he wants to spring up and snap Oswald’s neck.

“You can’t _own_ me, Oswald,” Ed rasps, lying on the stage at the Sirens, ghostly white, Oswald’s hands roving over him, as if he’s misplaced something, and hopes to get it back, like he might, if he just keeps scrambling. Ed reaches up, his hand magnetized towards Oswald’s neck, but he stops himself short, grips Oswald’s lapel as he struggles for breath, his eyes unfocused and distant.

“The answer is ‘nothing.’”

Oswald heard Ed speak this from behind him this time, and he turns around to see Ed through the prison bars. The kindest expression Ed looks like he’s wearing throughout this nightmare frowns at him, as he fakes sorting through case files.

“Nothing,” he repeats, one last time, looking more devastated than before, closing the drawer as he watches Oswald.

Oswald remembers this, the details of this. How things made him feel, how his emotions soared, emotions he didn’t know he still possessed.

“Remember that,” Ed whispers into his ear, as they hug on the couch. Oswald grips his back and remembers. 

“Remember that,” Ed mouths against Oswald’s shoulder in the morgue, his voice detached, his body soulless in Oswald’s arms. Oswald kisses the fabric of Ed’s coat and remembers.

“Remember that,” Ed says into his ear, their chests pressed together, Ed’s heart pounding so hard that Oswald feels his own speed up. Oswald remembers this—the last time he touched Ed. He’ll always remember this.

After pulling away, Ed looks back at him this time, his face like a mask as he walks away, and Oswald wonders what happened to the knife he was holding before.

His hands are empty; Ed’s walking away, and—

Oswald wakes, twisted up in his sheets, eyes almost glued shut from caked-up mascara, only loosened by the tears that stream out when he sits up, alone and scared.

“I love you,” he sobs, voice almost silent in the darkness of his bedroom. “I love you,” he repeats, here, where the words come easily became no one hears them. “I am so sorry,” he chokes out between tears, mascara pigment stains all over his fingers and the backs of his hands.

Some time later, after he’s exhausted himself with crying, he reaches for the wine bottle on his bedside table, but there’s nothing in it, so Oswald drops it to the floor, lays back down, and closes his eyes, pretending that this time, he can will this to _stop_.

**Author's Note:**

> Once I realized that the Gotham writers use riddles they find on the internet, I didn't feel bad about doing the same. Still, I like to force myself to try to figure out the answers to them, so, when I researched and found the one featured in this, my final answer was "love." The answer to this one, [according to The Riddler himself](http://www.braingle.com/brainteasers/teaser.php?op=2&id=31134&comm=0) (at least, that's this guy's username) is "friendship."
> 
> I scoffed. Fine. Whatever you say. What exactly is the difference between the two, anyway? 
> 
> Thanks for reading.


End file.
